Okay, I am a Sophomore in High School. Before talking to my counselor, I want to talk to you guys before I know what I’m up against.
Last Year, I created my FYP (4 yr plan). I was planning on taking Computer Science this year, but was a little surprised when she said that I need to have my Geometry Math credit. I was a bit surprised at this considering it was an entry-level computer science class. Why is this a problem? I have have never been good at all in Math, ever since middle school. In 7th grade, you could do either Math 2 or Pre-Algebra (the more advanced math). I wasn’t thinking about G.D. at the time, so I went with Math. Therefore, I’ve been behind my entire highschool career. This boils down to the question, how much Math do I need to venture into the college world of Computer Science? I will most likely do 3D and animation, but I really want CompSci as well. I really don’t want to cram 3 math courses next year, although I will do If I have to. What is the recommended credit I should graduate with? any other advice as far as math goes? Self study? Tutoring?
At most US colleges, a CIS/CS degree will require up to Calc 2 as well as Discrete Math and Diff Eq. By college, you’ll definitely want to meet the requisites for Calc 1, because you’ll need to take Calc 1, Calc 2 as well as Diff Eq and Discrete Math within your first two years. While you may take lower levels of math courses at college, they will not really count towards your major and may delay your third-year electives.
I don’t remember exactly the adv. course for senior year. But I should be in the green If I take Pre-Cal senior year? or is their a higher-level…I’ll do my research right quick.
I cant speak for software engineers because I am a mechanical engineer, but we need a lot of maths.
I would think that the more maths you know the better pretty much. Especially if you end up not going into the game making industry and instead end up working on software like CFD or FEM software you WILL need a lot of maths haha.
edit: I should say I am not a proper mechanical engineer yet. I finished 2 years now I am in China on a 1 year placement but I will resume next summer to do another 2 years and then I have a masters in mechanical engineering. yay 
Anything that has “science” or “engineering” attached to needs a lot of math. “Computer” has both. 
Alright…I’ll see what I can do. The journey will be full of perils, treacherous,difficult…
Haha trust me once you go to university (thats what we call it here in Europe) all the maths that you did in college will feel like this:
Just find a math major roommate. That’s how I managed. I did his English papers. He did my math. We were perfect roommates.
note I am not condoning cheating. We didn’t actually do each others homework, it just sounds funnier than “we helped each other limp through.”
+1
I barely passed discrete math and got a C- in Calc 2 in college. That was as high as I had to go with math. Never want to do anything more with it.
Geometry you say you need? You will use that all the time in game making! Take it! What are you waiting for?! But seriously, out of all the math I have taken, I would say that geometry is one of the most critical basics that you need to know.
I realize this, but i have the most unbelievably worst teacher anyone could ever have (sorry for grammar)
She doesn’t teach us Jackwagon…So I feel I’m being cheated of my valuable geometry time.
Wow, so you’re bad at math AND grammar 
Seriously, if you intend to be a programmer you need a fluent understanding of Math and Grammar. That’s what programming is. Computation and Syntax.
If you just can’t understand it that’s ok. There are plenty of positions for Liberal Arts majors these days…
I have had bad teachers. That’s never fun. Perhaps you should look into some books that might help out.
I would check amazon. Perhaps you need something that explains those hidden steps that were a real pain to learn. This book sounds like it would help with that: http://www.amazon.com/Humongous-Book-Geometry-Problems-Translated/dp/1592578640/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320294125&sr=1-3 That’s specific for geometry though, so for other maths I am not sure. Never read this book myself. Just assuming that its positive reviews and descriptions are mostly accurate.
Edit: Just noticed the author has one for calc and algebra. If you try one and it speaks to you you may want to get all of them to help explain things.
Anyway, that would be my plan of attack.
Word of advice, and I talked about this at both University of Southern California and again at the Art Institute for at least ten minutes in just the past 36 hours, no matter what career path you take in life, learn to communicate clearly. Learn how to write a memo and make your spelling and your grammar amazing. If you learn nothing else in the next year, learn those two things.
You may scoff and think “bah! Imma be a coder, i speek what i mean, not rite it, they cant unnerstand me, tuff, haters gonna hate” but the most essential skill you will learn that will ensure you are employed and employable, or even if you intend to make it rich on your own, especially if you intend to make it on your own, is your ability to communicate clearly and properly. You don’t do that, you’ll essentially limit yourself to the technical equivalent of flipping burgers.
P.S. I’ve taught University graduate level math in the not too distant past, if you can master all of the idiosyncrasies of C++, mathematics is practically a walk in the park. The reason that the higher-level areas of mathematics is so hard to many programmers is that they don’t use it every day, all day.
I generally think, the better you are thinking mathematically, the better of a programmer you’ll be…
I mean all programs rest on a HUGE pile of math. If you can’t dig into that math yourself, you will always be relying on other people to feed you classes and API’s to deal with all the ‘underlaying complex matheticity’ of it all.
Which certainly people do that, they are called web programmers mostly.
But eh, I don’t know. To not like math and want to program seems odd to me. The two go hand in hand in my eye. If your bad at math, I would never suspect you could be a very good programmer.
Admittedly I will say that I took Calculus junior year of high school and somewhat struggled with it. However I went back to college this past year and took calculus at age 25 and did really well, and found it not too diffucult. So I guess years of brain development and maturing made it easier to grapple advanced mathematics…
Although one thing about math for me, is math did not become interesting to me until I began to fully connect math to computer graphics. Math disconnected from computer graphics programming, like doing engineering or theoretical problems bores me, I could hardly focus on it. But math for the purpose of creating functions on the computer to produce pretty pictures, can focus on it for hours.
Hey… watch it!
The more maths you know, the simpler your problems will become.
I can’t speak to what will help in your school career, I never went. I can however give a bit of insight of what you need careerwise.
In my experience there are three essential skills to a successful programming career. They are (in no particular order) : Abstraction, Economy, and Communication.
Abstraction:
Programming exists to solve problems. Oftentimes very complex ones. The ability to distill the problem down to its core elements is critical in divising a solution. If you don’t fully grasp the problem, even a virtuoso implementation of the latest in advance computational physics will result in a failed project. I can’t exaggerate the number of brilliant programmers I’ve encountered that are weak in this area. Sure they have good jobs, but they are almost worthless without a detailed design spec written by someone else.
Economy:
Getting from A to B in the least amount of steps. This one follows directly from the last. The better you understand the problem the more efficient your solution will be. A boolean flag is not as sexy as full blown state machine, but sometimes it’s all you need. Know the difference.
Communication:
As usual Justin is dead on right. If you can’t articulate your vision, you might as well be blind. It’s a very rare case that the decision maker is going to sufficiently technical to understand that your super-duper, never seen before approach is going to forever revolutionize the way he or she does business. You need to able to demonstrate and explain it in terms that your target audience can grasp. More than that, you need to articulate it’s inherent value to them. No one cares how smart you are, the care about what you can do for them.
To your original question: math is a tool, each language you use is a tool, all the techniques, APIs, and related systems you know are tools. The deeper your grasp of them, the better your ability to apply the above principles. Just remember that the hammer does not make the carpenter.
This +10. I’m also a former mechanical engineer, current if you consider the little side jobs I do now and then. Currently I’m a Math teacher, formerly a Physics/Chemistry teacher. The bottom line is ALL those disciplines come down to problem solving, if you actually learn what the subjects are, or more importantly how to “think” like a problem solver, rather than just learning manipulative “tricks” and memorization. If you really internalize that notion of learning to solve problems, you can do any related math discipline.
Somewhere this is lost on a surprisingly large number of people, even those with successful careers in said discipline. Often times those same people that don’t actually know what they’re doing, bitch about “bad teaching”, which in my experience, may or may not be true. If the fundamental approach of the student to the material is appropriate, and yet they aren’t learning anything, then it’s bad teaching. However, if you expect to just sit there and “magically absorb” what is going on and that it should be easy and require nearly zero thought, attention, or work, then it is YOU who are at fault, not the teacher.
So my advice is, take math, and lots of it, but don’t just “take” the course, as in don’t just sit there and “expect to be taught” and that the teacher can just “tell you what you need to know and how to do it”, you need to really try and understand what it is you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, and most importantly, learn to teach yourself, which is what problem solving is.
“Intelligence is not what you know, it’s what you do when you don’t know”.
Wow. I am seriously surprised at all the Grammar comments. I am way ahead of my class as far as L.A. and Foreign Language goes.
I just need to emphasize the horrific teaching abilities of said instructor. I’m not going to use my presentation grammar for an online forum.
I don’t care if you are the best at spelling and grammar in your whole state if you neglect to use your ability. You appear to be sloppy, lazy and have little care and respect for others by not putting time and effort into proper communication. Why should I bother to respond to you if you don’t think your post is worth your time to make sure you articulate it correctly? Not trying to be harsh, but you have an online identity and reputation that will follow you. You should put more thought into how you present yourself.
You should always try your best to use proper spelling and grammar. It is like anything else, use it or lose it. You’ll fall into a habit of not using it most of the time and then forget to when you need to.
The pros do not have to care about typos and slang while in their own office, but when talking to other professionals it is an unwritten rule to use your best communication skills. Basically you always put your best foot forward. You may never know when that extra effort will help out. It usually does in the long run anyway.